NOVI >> Lou Schimmel has an answer for the dilemma of whether masterpieces from the Detroit Institute of Arts should be sold to pay debt in bankrupt Detroit.

“I would deal with the DIA similar to the way I dealt with the excess sewage capacity in the City of Pontiac,” Schimmel said Thursday, drawing laughter from the audience at a public finance seminar at Walsh College.

“I would set up a separate authority (and) see if we couldn’t generate a revenue stream and leave it the way it is,” he said. “I would set it off as a separate entity. I wouldn’t sell any of the art. I wouldn’t touch the facility.”

“I think the judge did the right thing,” Schimmel said of U.S. District Judge Steven Rhodes’ Tuesday ruling that Detroit is eligible for Chapter 9 bankruptcy.

“If (they) continue to negotiate, (they’re) not going to get anywhere, anyway.”

Schimmel, Deputy Oakland County Executive Bob Daddow, Detroit Finance Director John Naglick and Hamtramck Emergency Manager Cathy Square were among the speakers at the seminar at Walsh College’s Novi campus. Topics ranged from the importance of long-term budgeting to the provisions of Michigan’s emergency manager law.

Daniel Hoops, the chair of the college’s accounting and taxation department, shared his philosophy at the seminar.

“We believe running a city, county, township, state or school district is very much the same as running a business.”

“If you don’t know where you are (financially), you’re going to wake up and get an email in the middle of the night that the construction cash for sewer operations is going to run out. How in the hell did they let that happen?”

Daddow, deputy executive at a county that boasts a rolling budget balanced through 2016 and no pension or retiree health care debt, said political willpower and long-term planning are some of the reason’s for Oakland County’s stability. An example of the county’s financial culture is planning budgets that go two years beyond the terms of office of those creating the budget, he said.

“We have never had anything but a unanimous budget regardless of political party,” Daddow says

“People say, ‘you’re Oakland County, you’re rich,’” but the county lost the most property tax base in the state on a percentage basis during “the Great Recession,” Daddow said.